In 1983, I lived in West Berlin for 8 months. I graduated from high school at age 16 and took a gap year before going to college. My father, a Chemistry professor, did a sabbatical at the Freie Universitaet Berlin, and our family went with him.

Paradoxically for a city surrounded by a wall, I was afforded a lot of freedom in Berlin. I took public transportation anywhere and everywhere using a student pass. I rode my bike. Every week I would go alone to my violin lesson on both the bus and the subway. My violin teacher, an American expat married to a German, lived in an apartment near the wall. She sometimes crossed into East Berlin to buy sheet music cheaply. My copy of the Brahms violin sonata #1 is an old Edition Peters, bought on one of those trips. When my teacher gave it to me, I handled it gingerly, like it might be radioactive.

The only time I ever crossed into East Berlin myself back then was on a carefully guided tour for American tourists, which we were. After crossing at Checkpoint Charlie, we drove down Unter den Linden, toured a museum with a bust of Nefertiti, and visited a memorial to fallen soldiers.

Checkpoint Charlie, May 1983

Brandenburg Gate from the West, May 1983

We were shown a lot of the wall, too. Across the wall and no-man’s land, you could see this futuristic silver ball, the Fernsehturm (TV Tower). Built from 1965-1969 and 365 meters tall (at the time), it was visible from many parts of West Berlin. Particularly as I rode my bike around the city, it was a landmark I kept in my mind’s eye. Like my Eastern copy of Brahms, it seemed extra-foreign and a little sinister.

Berlin Wall from the West, looking across no-man’s land. Fernsehturm in the distance. May 1983

Living there at that time and playing music there influenced what I’ve wanted to write about as an adult. One of my stories at the Clarion West writers’ workshop, “Sunrise on West Lake,” was fantasy about a musician who escaped from a repressive society.

In 1997 I married my husband, who was born and raised in (then West) Germany. We’ve been back many times to visit his friends and family, but only once to Berlin, in 1998.

From the West, 1983

From the East, 1998

We could visit the Brandenburg gate from the other side (and it’s a lot cleaner looking!)

Checkpoint Charlie was also no longer recognizable.

Checkpoint Charlie, 15 years later, May 1998

Construction was everywhere in Berlin back then in the first heady years after the wall came down, and it’s still going on. Pieces of the wall were dismantled and sent around the world as memorials. We have such a piece right here in Mountain View CA. It’s next to the Public Library, and someone made a virtual geocache out of it. I decided that the anniversary would be a good day to find that cache, which is called “Wir Lieben Dich” for obvious reasons.

To find this virtual cache, you had to answer a question about the area around the cache, and have your picture taken with the pieces of the wall. I ran into a fellow cacher at the library, and she happily took my picture.

A piece of the Berlin Wall outside the Mountain View Public Library

As we rightly celebrate the wall’s demise, we also remember those who died trying to cross it:

Checkpoint Charlie, 1983

And the victims of the Nazis:

Plotzensee Memorial to the victims of Hitler’s Dictatorship (May 1983)

This book is short but packs a punch. The story of 10-year-old Srulik’s running away in plain sight and evading the Nazis that killed the rest of his family would be almost unbelievable were it not for the evidence of his survival embodied in the author and in her book. Written as a granddaughter’s retelling of her grandfather’s memories, it gives modern readers a way in to another time and place.

What I’m reading . . .

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The Brain—is wider than the Sky

I am a neuroscientist, educator, geocacher, Unitarian-Universalist, amateur violinist, and parent. I have always been fascinated by how people's brains learn, and especially why this process is easier and more fun for some brains than others. This led me to get a PhD in Neuroscience, work in biotech, and then become a science educator and writer.